January 8, 2014

Deaths From Cancer Continue To Decrease

Over the past two decades, risk of cancer death has dropped overall by twenty percent, according to the American Cancer Society annual cancer statistics report.

According to the report, Cancer Statistics 2014, the most progress has been found among middle-aged black men for whom the rate of death has declined by approximately 50 percent. Although this is an incredibly positive trend, the highest cancer rates and death rates continue to be among black men. Of all ethnicities in the United States, Asian Americans have the lowest rate and are half as likely to have cancer related deaths as black men.

Every year, the American Cancer Society compiles information estimating the number of new cancer cases and deaths expected in the United States and gathers recent data on cancer incidence, mortality and survival. This information is taken from the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for health Statistics. The data gathered is released in the two reports, Cancer Statistics and Cancer Facts & Figures.

According to this year’s report, an estimated 1,665,540 people will be diagnosed with new cancer cases and 585,720 people will die from cancer in the United States in 2014. About half of the cases among men will be from prostate, lung and colon cancer. Prostate cancer alone will account for approximately one in four cases of newly diagnosed cancer. For women, the three most commonly diagnosed cancers in 2014 are projected to be breast, lung and colon. Together, these cancers should account for half of all the cases in women and breast cancer is predicted to comprise 29 percent of all the new cancer cases diagnosed.

Approximately 1,600 people will die per day from cancer in 2014. Accounting for about half of all the total cancer deaths in men and women, lung, colon, prostate and breast cancers continue to be the leading causes of cancer related death. Slightly more than one in four cancer deaths are attributed to lung cancer.

From the years 2006 to 2010 the incidence of cancer in men declined slightly by 0.6 percent. Among women the rate of cancer incidence remained the same, but cancer death rates decreased per year by 1.8 percent in men and 1.4 percent in women. In the past two decades, the combined cancer death rate has continuously declined from a peak in 1991 of 215.1 per 100,000 to 171.8 per 100,000 in 2010. The decrease of twenty percent for cancer-related deaths means approximately 1,340,400 deaths have been avoided within the twenty year time span.

Depending on age, race and sex, the magnitude of decline in cancer deaths varies with no difference among white women over the age of 80 and a 55 percent decline among black men between the ages of 40 and 49. Within every 10-year age group, it was black men who experienced the largest drop in deaths.

“The progress we are seeing is good, even remarkable, but we can and must do even better,” said John R. Seffrin, PhD, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society. “The halving of the risk of cancer death among middle aged black men in just two decades is extraordinary, but it is immediately tempered by the knowledge that death rates are still higher among black men than white men for nearly every major cancer and for all cancers combined.”